Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Molson Popularity Contest Emabrrassing

Will I write about the Molson Cup every month? Maybe. Certainly if it keeps providing interesting story lines I will.

To start the season, the Habs entrusted the selection of the game's three stars to the wider fan population - well they thought it would be wide. Since that time, a few home truths have been reproven: the voting Montreal fans are tenderphiles (that is they have a goalie fetish) and most Montreal fans don't care enough to vote.
Last game, Carey Price was awarded with the Molson Cup for December. It is debatable whether he was the right choice, but the Molson Cup doesn't score bad games, only good ones. The award was accompanied by a press release announcing the feat and a dubious headline: "Carey Price earns Molson Cup in December".

Usually these press releases aren't worth reading, so I'm sure you may have all spent your time doing other things. But in not reading, you may have missed a very interesting tidbit - that is the number of votes.

Carey Price "earned" the Molson Cup by bringing in just over 3,000 votes in his 13 starts (or 235 votes a start). His biggest rivals were Cammalleri and Gionta who managed an embarrassing 165 and 120 votes per game, respectively.

The embarrassment doesn't lie with the players though. Rather it lies with the people that thought charging people to text in their choice for player of the game would catch on like wildfire.

Based on the published numbers, the absolute maximum number of people that could have voted last month (assuming some amount of reason) is about 30,000 - and that would require a 12 way tie for fourth one point behind Gionta. When I plugged in some generous guesswork, I came up with about 1,200 per game joining in this Bell promotion. A more realistic expectation is that less than 1,000 people care enough to vote.

This is less voters than some websites get comments during a game. Trust me, thousands care about these results, just not enough to go on the Habs own website and vote. Now this wouldn't matter in the least if this was a website to website affair. It isn't. The Canadiens still ceremoniously trot out the Cup and its "winner" on the first home game of the month and lavish on a ceremony. Personally, I think the ceremony embarrasses the team given the basis on which it is built this year.

Maybe it's just a matter of time and I'm jumping the gun here. What do you think?

Price has won the Molson Cup for the season

Looking through the votes, the history of this Cup and the trends, I feel I have enough evidence to say that Price will win this Cup for the season. He has taken it in three straight months now. His lead in absolute votes can be no less than 8,000. So unless he never gets a vote again and the forwards stop splitting the spoils (the highest possible forward total is 8,373 right now, and much more likely to be significantly lower than that), then there's no other possible result. This is especially true given that Price can win the month with a month like he just had.

Maybe the team should just get all the embarrassing ceremonies out of the way sooner rather than later. Next game, Cups for February, March, April and season?

This isn't a very bold prediction in my books. I made it nearly 3 months ago as well. He nearly won the Cup last year!